Ryan O’Reilly Traded To St. Louis Blues

The St. Louis Blues added some forward depth today by signing Tyler Bozak and David Perron, but weren’t done making a splash. The team has acquired Buffalo Sabres center Ryan O’Reilly. The Sabres will receive a 2019 first round pick, a 2021 second round pick, Tage Thompson, Vladimir Sobotka and Patrik Berglund. The deal will be completed today and the Blues will pay O’Reilly’s $7.5MM signing bonus, due just before midnight. The 2019 pick is top-10 protected, meaning should the season get away from the Blues they will not have to give up a high pick next summer.

While the deal certainly brings several assets to the Sabres, getting rid of the Sobotka and Berglund contracts were imperative for the Blues to get something like this done. TO complete the deal without giving up one of their top prospects like Robert Thomas or Jordan Kyrou, while also protecting their deep defensive corps. The Blues are ready to compete once again in 2018-19, and have brought in some experienced forwards to put them over the top.

For the Sabres, they not only deal O’Reilly before having to pay his signing bonus, but also get five useful assets. While Sobotka and Berglund were slightly overpaid and potentially hurting the Blues salary structure, they’re clear upgrades on some of the bottom-six options that Buffalo has used over the past few seasons. Thompson meanwhile is an excellent prospect in his own right, and should give them another key building block in their quest for redemption. Grouping the 20-year old Thompson with Rasmus Dahlin, Jack Eichel, Casey Mittelstadt and others will give Buffalo a core that they can really market as a future perennial playoff team.

O’Reilly is good player but one of the problems was that he was a disruption in the locker room. Also he 27 years old and they want a younger core of players 20-23 years old that will be together as a group hopefully for years to come.

Wow! I need to let this settle in a bit. That is a lot to give up, but I have a feeling that this is as much about turning over the locker room and the entitled attitudes as it is about the product on the ice. I think I will like this move…eventually.

Losing Ryan O can only be described as making all of us feel blue in Buffalo. He could score, he could win a faceoff and in a pinch could play goalie. One time he drove the Buffalo Bus when the driver ran away from the bus at an exceptionally long red light. The draft picks will all be combined to get Tom Vanick back from the Red Wings.